Jump to
A Canadian sushi restaurant has been flooded with negative reviews after a TikToker said a server food-shamed her.
Cassandra Mauro said the waitress at Paper Crane Sushi Bar and Bistro in King City, Ontario, criticized her for how much food she and her friend ordered, describing their order as “too much.”
Mauro described her experience in a TikTok, which amassed 1.3 million views.
Mauro said she and her friend were “starving” when they arrived at the restaurant so they ordered chicken fried rice, shrimp tempura, noodles, and two sushi rolls. Before Mauro’s friend could order another roll, she said, the server looked at her and said: “No, no, no, too much food.”
Mauro said she explained they could just take their food to-go if they ordered too much. But when her friend ordered an extra sushi roll anyway, the server scoffed at her.
Mauro said the waitress then took their menus and walked away.
In response, the restaurant’s owners posted an apology note to Instagram, appearing to accept her version of events. Insider contacted the owners for comment but did not immediately hear back.
A post shared by Paper Crane Sushi Bar & Bistro (@papercranesushi)
The statement said the owners understood her reaction and spoke to their staff in the hope it wouldn’t happen again.
They said that any offense was accidental, and said a language barrier may have played a part.
In her video, Maura said the got “worse” after the initial order, when the manager walked over, looked the pair up and down, and said, “Hungry?”
“And she goes, yeah, you ordered too much food,” Mauro said. “It’s not going to fit on this table. Get up, move to this table.”
Mauro said she then asked if they could bring the food out slowly, but “she was like, ‘No, move.”
“The whole time we were eating, we could see the kitchen from where we were sitting,” Mauro said. “The chef was like making the food looking at us and laughing. At a restaurant where you come to order food, you get mocked for ordering food.”
While the pair were eating, Mauro said the server came over and told them one of their dishes came with a side of rice, and asked them if they still needed it.
“What do you mean? Now you’re taking away food that we’re actually paying for?” Mauro said. “Now we can’t order more and you’re taking away the stuff that we’re literally paying for?”
Mauro said they finished everything they asked for.
“We paid, and we tipped,” she said. “Now I’m looking back on this whole interaction, I’m like, that was mortifying.”
In the days since Mauro posted her TikTok, Paper Crane has been slammed with bad reviews on Google and Yelp appearing to refer to her story.
“HORRIBLE!” one reviewer wrote. “Don’t waste your money here, these people will make comments about how you are eating too much food!”
Another urged the restaurant to “do better.”
“We don’t tolerate body shaming anymore,” they said. “Your business deserves to suffer losses for this.”
One of the several Google reviews that appeared to be jokes riffing on the video, saying: “Manager made us step on a scale before and after our meal. Weird.”
Paper Crane’s apology note responded to the backlash, saying it was overwhelming and had included “threats and racially motivated harassment.”
It said the restaurant would turn of its social-media comments, citing the intensity of the response.
“We are not intending to hide from our customer service obligations, but our focus will be protecting our family through this difficult time,” they said. “We hope you all understand.”
Mauro addressed the negative reviews in another TikTok, where she said she wanted to call the restaurant out but not to seriously harm its business.
“Yes, what the restaurant did was not OK, yes they really treated me horribly,” she said. “Although I don’t want to be the reason why someone goes hungry or a restaurant goes out of business. I won’t be able to sleep at night knowing this business might go down because of a bad experience that I had.”
Mauro said the review-bombing was a step too far.
“Just because someone has wronged you, doesn’t make it OK to wrong them back,” she said. “That’s not what I wanted that video to do.”
Read next